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<title>"Linux in Universities" Round Table</title>
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<h2>"Linux in Universities" Round Table</h2>
On November 12th, 2002, the united Los Angeles Linux User Groups
were pleased to present:
<blockquote><b>
   "Round Table with Red Hat: Linux in Universities -<br>
    what's keeping us from rolling out Linux on the desktop?"
</b></blockquote>
<p>
This event was one of many stops on
<a href="http://www.redhat.com/roadtour/">Red Hat's Road Tour 2002</a>.
Red Hat has a <a href="http://www.redhat.com/roadtour/journal/">diary</a>
of each day of the trip online, but haven't yet written up their
Los Angeles stop -- perhaps we gave them so much feedback, they
got indigestion :-)

<h2>Video</h2>
The world-famous <a href="http://www.lpbn.org">Linux Public Broadcasting Network</a>
filmed the event, and is making <a href="http://stream.lpbn.org:8080/ramgen/redhat-usc111202.rm">streaming video</a> of the event available.
If you enjoy the video, please consider <a href="http://www.lpbn.org/donate.htm">making a donation to support LPBN</a>.

<h2>Summary</h2>
Here's a very brief summary of the event; watch the video if this whets your appetite.
<p>
The round table was at USC's Taper Hall of Humanities, room THH 202.
About 80 people attended -- very close to the expected number.
It started off with about an hour of informal questions and answers, and a demo of Red Hat 8.0,
followed by an hour-long panel discussion.
<p>
The demo of RH8.0 was actually useful - I find its menus confusing, and having
them explain where they're headed gave me some comfort
that things in 8.0 are an improvement and that 8.1 will
be better.
<p>
The four sysadmins on the panel seemed to agree that
being able to manage a large number of desktops easily was important,
and we talked about how to do that.  The EON(?) project at
some university (I ran into this a few weeks ago, but can't find
the name or a link) was given as an example of a slightly
customized version of Red Hat.  Other likely examples:
<a href="http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/realmkit/">www.linux.ncsu.edu/realmkit</a>,
<a href="http://linux.ait.iastate.edu">linux.ait.iastate.edu</a>.
<p>
The sysadmins from businesses tried to pound into Red Hat
the importance of letting medium-sized businesses
give Red Hat money by purchasing inexpensive
(e.g. $5000/$10000) yearly support contracts
without having to talk to a salesman.
<p>
Quite a few questions from the audience got
answered (e.g. about AFS, embedded development).
<p>
<h2>Panelists</h2>
The panelists were the <a href="http://www.redhat.com/roadtour/meet/">four fellows from Red Hat</a>:
<ul>
<li>Jeremy Hogan, Manager of Community Relations
<li>James McDermott, Systems Engineer
<li>Dave Lawrence, QA (and Bugzilla maintainer)
<li>Jonathan Opp, Marketing Writer
</ul>
along with four local Linux users with experience deploying Linux at universities
or corporations:
<ul>
<li>Dan Kegel, <a href="http://www.lalugs.org">lalugs.org</a>
<li>Gary Calvin, <a href="http://www.kenwoodusa.com">Kenwood USA Corp.</a>
<li>Dave Fallon, <a href="http://www.digitaldomain.com">Digital Domain</a>
<li>Garrik Staples, <a href="http://www.usc.edu/isd/">ISD/USC Systems Administrator</a>
</ul>
<h2>Related Pages</h2>
See also <a href="http://www.kegel.com/linux/edu">www.kegel.com/linux/edu</a>
for more information about deploying Linux at universities,
including streaming video of a talk on the topic
presented earlier this month at USC as part of the
<a href="http://www.socallinuxexpo.com">Southern California Linux Expo</a>.
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